With Lynda.com, you’ll learn all kinds of things that you never knew. Though the site has humble roots reaching all the way back to 1995, over the years it has turned into one of the best sources for online video courses.

The knowledge on Lynda.com isn’t available for free, but look at it this way: a $25 monthly subscription is cheaper than the cash you’d spend on decent camera gear and much more affordable than paying your way through photography workshops. 25,484 video tutorials packaged into 546 photography courses is a lifetime of learning.

Yes, that’s just for photography. There are thousands of other courses across hundreds of other topics! So, go ahead, ask me which photography course to take on Lynda.com, and I will say – ALL of them!

But to help you start, here are the photography courses we’d recommend if you want to snap right to it.

Ben Long is a veteran Lynda.com instructor and photography teacher. This particular course is just one of several in his entire Foundations of Photography catalog. Before you jump to other topics like understanding exposure or playing with black and white, use this five-hour course to learn how you should work your shots.

This is categorized as an intermediate course on Lynda.com, but I would start with this one because it has a lot of good advice on the ways you should see a scene. Follow the exercises and try to simulate the workshops in your own home or backyard.

One of the best takeaways is to see light as a subject in itself and how you can work with its direction and texture to improve your shots. Follow this up with the remaining Foundation of Photography modules on:

In this course, Chris Orwig continues your photography education with another five-hour set of videos that focuses on Lightroom essentials. The structure follows the workflow you are likely to use for managing all your shots. In the first two minutes of the course, you will learn exactly why you need Lightroom.

Charge Ahead with Advanced Courses

I think it’s safe to say that you will fall in love with Ben Long’s avuncular style. If you took his first course that we recommended and liked it, then we recommend continuing with the remainder of his course catalog because they cover pretty much all important aspects of photography.

In this course, the kindly teacher returns to give you a weekly dose of photography wisdom. What’s unique about this course is that it’s ongoing.

Every week, Ben Long takes you through yet another shooting scenario. Sometimes that means analyzing gear, teaching a software technique, or maybe just sharing his perspective on something tangential to photography. Every episode ends with a call-to-action designed to get you picking up your camera and going out to practice.

The latest episode is always free, but a Lynda.com subscription gives you access to all the episodes throughout the course’s history.

If you are like me, all you want to do is shoot with ambient light. But understanding the tricks of flash5 Flash Tips for Speedlight Newbies5 Flash Tips for Speedlight NewbiesAt its core, the camera flash is a simple piece of technology that's deceptively hard to use well.Read More and perfect lighting is what professional photography is all about. Strobist.com is a unique resource that focuses on nothing but flash photography, which means David Hobby (founder of Strobist) is the right man to teach us all about it.

His tips stress on practical knowledge rather than expensive flash gear. The course includes diagrams and detailed explanations of various lighting setups to make it easier to understand the complexities of flash in photography.

It’s great if you are releasing your photos to the public domain, or even licensing it with Creative CommonsWhat Is Creative Commons, And Should You Use It?What Is Creative Commons, And Should You Use It?Creative Commons is a set of licenses which automatically give you permission to do various things, such as reuse and distribute the content. Let's find out more about it and how to use it.Read More, but the downside of both is that you won’t make much money that way. If you want to retain rights to your photos, realize that professional photography is serious business with lots of legal stipulations.

Candid street photography is one thing while posed street photography is another. The good news is that this course explores both sides and ends up teaching you how to excel at whichever one you prefer.

Today, storytelling is a buzzword. You can say a thousand words with one photo, or give a commentary with many. Expert photojournalist Douglas Kirkland shows you how to set up a scene and weave your photos into a fascinating story.

Every course on this list talks about “the photographer’s eye” in some way, but it bears repeating here as Douglas Kirkland explains how to keep your eye open for photographic opportunities and milk those opportunities through composition and other creative choices.

This is where the advice below proves useful. Go behind the scenes with the likes of David Hobby, Lauren Randolph, Derrick Story, and Douglas Kirkland. All of them have one thing in common – they share how they started their photography journey.

I decided that my compass point would not just be community photography and community journalism, but I wanted to produce a body of work that would grow over twenty years, and 100 years from now would be a fantastic resource for someone wanting to know what Howard County was like between 2010 and 2030.

Lauren Randolph did it with small personal projects. Be inspired to do the same. She talks about the importance of social networks and personal projects in establishing a photography career:

I’m constantly practicing, I’m constantly shooting photos, I’m constantly looking for composition and if other people weren’t looking or seeing or responding then maybe I’d get lazy or maybe I wouldn’t shoot as much, and so it’s nice to have like a community keeping you involved.

You are recording a very important piece of history. You want a great image that lasts into the future and people remember. I love always to document family, as I did my kids when they were growing up. I find it best to start with the available light. Respond what is with you, what is in the air, what is in the location.

In this short lesson, Derrick Story comes from a different angle and explores the rapidly-changing photography landscape and how you need to balance a multiple set of skills to succeed:

I ate beans and rice for a long time. But at least the whole time I was doing what I wanted to do and I stuck with it. So that, you know that has always been my career advice. Get as close to, you know, what you love as possible and you know, stick with it.

Saikat is a techno-adventurer in a writer's garb. When he is not scouring the net for tech news, you can catch him looking for life hacks and learning tidbits. You can find him on LinkedIn & Twitter watching over the world.